What is the best eminiece 15" driver (and the cheapest) and where is the best place to get them - DOES Chris do em? im building some cabs and im lookin for about 600 watt if u know where i can get good affordable 15" drivers from other than emminince ill be greatly thankful

Cheers

LF Discos

(DJ LFD ON AIR 105.1FM)
ESSENCE FM

Yep - I'm an Eminence distributor. If you are looking for 600 Watt RMS drivers then you only really have one option in the Eminence range, and that is the OMEGA PRO series.

Available in 12", 15" or 18" versions, they are all 600W RMS handling at 8 Ohms.

Other area's to consider when building cabs of +300 Watts RMS, are the crossovers and treble horns (Tweeters) make sure that they are all rated correctly just sticking in a motorola Piezo tweeter and praying will NOT work . You will also need to use XLR cannons or ideally Speakon style connectors - Jack Plugs become hot and have a habit of failing at this level of output.

Let me know what version of the Omega series you require and i'll quote a price. The Omega's are one of the better speakers around, although they aren't cheap!.

Eminence range of drivers are very good and widely used in branded Cabs
Bit too heavy for me .
If I could get hold of a couple of non violent girl roadies to assist me I am sure they would learn alot and I would consider getting some.

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non violent girl roadies

That rules Paula Out Pete, she wields a deadly hammer!.

I use eminence drivers for my whole rig
ive got a pair of bins with a 15 omega pro inside (800watts RMS each) and they're lovely - although also heavy. the omega 15s go for about £140 the pair.

You could also go for the kappa 15LF which is a long excursion version of the kappa 15 which i think is now rated at 500 RMS so would easily take 600 or so as long as the signal is clean.

Last year I fitted Gamma 15" drivers into my tops with new 3k5 eminence xovers but left the existing horns. I'm not entirely happy with the sound when I use my tops on their own (A bit trebley - so much so that I keep the treble on my mixer at about 25-30%). Any suggestions? Is the xover freq too high/low or will replacing the horns help??
PaulS

The eminence pxb crossovers have no kind of eq or anything so literally there sticking everything above 3.5k into teh horn - this can make the top sound a bit strange since its gonna be more responsive at 3.5k than it is at 12K - using an "air eq" (often found on crossovers / amps) should help - or just a bit of gentle eq'ing manually. What horns are they just out of interest - ive just built some new tops with delta 12's and psd2002 comp drivers - sound beautiful and look great too (inspiration taken from the deltec gx12's but wasnt prepared to pay an extra£400 for them to make them for me lol)

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What horns are they

I'm not 100% sure but they look like Motorola 400watt mid range pro drivers. Freq response 0.8 - 20k
PaulS

Has anyone else got any recommendations on the best crossover frequency & horns to use??? Please post away!
Paul S

why dont u just turn the treble down a bit - single 15" cabs designed for full range use never really do much bass anyway from my experience - whatever you do the treble is always gonna be more responsive than the bass - thats where the box design comes in - who makes the boxes? are they supposed to do bass?

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why dont u just turn the treble down a bit

I do - a lot as it happens. My question was posed after the post from Chris

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Other area's to consider when building cabs of +300 Watts RMS, are the crossovers and treble horns (Tweeters)

The crossovers were replaced at the same time as the speakers to ensure that they were at the correct rating (in watts) but I just wonder if I've got the xover freq right?. I also added a 22ohm resistor in the feed to the horn.

Any acoustic engineers in the forum??
PaulS

To get the best Sound from your Crossover and Horns make sure that they are matched, so that you get the full benefit in frequency response, for example having a full range system as follows:-

Bass / Mid Driver:- 50hz - 3khz

Horn 5khz - 20khz

Wouldn't be much good, since your "Full Range" system is missing the 3khz - 5 khz frequency spectrum!.

Equally having a horn which can handle 3khz - 20 khz but a crossover that has a x-over point of 6khz wouldn't be much use either!.

Here is an idea of a good quality 3 way correctly configured system:-

Bass Driver:- 40hz - 1khz
Mid Driver:- 800hz - 3 khz
Horn Driver:- 3khz - 20khz
Crossover Points:- 800hz (Mid Driver), 3khz (Horn Tweeter)

However more commonly the cheaper systems are 2 way, so here is a reasonable 2 way configuration:-

Bass / Mid Driver:- 50hz - 3khz
Horn:- 3khz - 20 khz
Crossover Point:- 3khz

In order to get the best performance from your horn driver make sure that the x-over frequency matches, or is very close to the starting point of your horn. So if your horn covers 3khz - 20khz then choose a X-over which passes frequencies above 3khz.

It is also perfectly acceptable for your chosen drivers to overlap frequency, and your system may sound slightly better for it, for example you could use:-

Bass / Mid Driver:- 50hz - 6khz
Horn:- 3khz - 20khz

In this system you would just have slightly more empathis on the Mid Range frequencies of 3khz - 6khz which is actually useful for presence in Vocal, P.A or Karaoke Applications

It's also useful to remember that Human Hearing is not effective below 70hz or above 18khz (and as you get older that decreases to around 16khz!).

In Bass cabs high powered units which cover frequencies below 70hz (Some as low as 20 or 25hz) are not effective for audio, but are useful for giving you and your audience that deep rooted feeling in your Stomach that makes you feel like your Lunch is about to make a re-appearence

Of course a lot of your bass response and how effective it is, falls into the cabinet design, whether it is ported (The Holes in the front of the Cab) and the volume (As in litres) of the cab.

If you decide on making a compact cab with 600 Watt drivers fitted then they are likely to viberate their way off the stage falling with a crash into your audience.

Always make sure that the size of the cab matches the spec given for the Bass Driver. Acoustic Wadding (Cotton wool type material) is useful for gluing into the cab to stop Audio refelctions from the internal surfaces.

It's usually better to use "Speakon" style connectors for speakers. They lock into place, are well insulated and not prone to little fingers pulling them out. They also handle the large current levels which are found on high power systems especially where feeding 4 or 2 ohm arrays.

Thanks very much for that Chris - I'll print it out and digest it all later
Are you back full time yet and is the sales dept reopened??
PaulS

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Are you back full time yet and is the sales dept reopened??

I'm doing half days at the Moment, lol, Part-Timer but working well into the Evening to catch up with the Back Log of 3 weeks worth of Emails and a full Voice Mail

I've got a ticket system running on the website enquiry form, so if you need a sales enquiry answering can you either email it or submit it via the Enquiry form?.

Obviously i'm playing "catch up" at the Moment!.

Yeha ill go with what most of chris said there.
Always use speakons, always cover 3 internal walls with wadding. i get crossovers specifically designed for the emionence compression drivers i use so if you're buyiung new comp drivers i would recommend specially designed xovers rather than off the shelf ones.

Are you building bass bins or full range cabs? with regards to vibrating off the stage - i have a pair of subs which i stick 800 watts into each (at below 350Hz). There very small (about 60x60x50cm) and weigh in around 38kg. they dont go anywhere - especially when uve got the mids ontop of poles on em. but ive never put them on a stage - bass should always be on the floor (otherwise u lose a few Db). if you are planning to build noisy bass enclosures use 18mm ply NOT MDF it will shake itself apart at high pressures, and make sure u brace the bxes in enough.

If on the other hand you are building full range cabs then chris is spot on wi the xover info etc. but i would always recommend subs and tops for sound quality etc.

Happy building
Steve

If you got the money buy DELTEC BX16 and DELTEC GX10 together they cope easily with up to 1100 watts a side and stay crystal clear. The crossovers are bomb proof and are built to last. We have three sets of these and they perform! Couple them up to a Numark Dimension 4 amp for reliability at a good price.